Shocked Sound - Folksy, Solo And Acoustic

MUSIC

The Singer-songwriter Returns To A Solo Format For Her Florida Visit.

May 21, 1993|By Parry Gettelman, Sentinel Popular Music Critic

Performing ''unplugged'' may be the hot new trend, but that's how singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked started out - as a solo artist with an acoustic guitar. She returns to the solo format for her first Florida dates ever, including a show at the Junk Yard in Casselberry Thursday.

''The first two years of my career, I only toured solo,'' said Shocked, 31, ''and it seems like audiences who had a taste of how strong I am as a solo performer were clamoring, 'Oh, we don't want to see the band; we want to see you.' I was always very insistent that . . . music is about interaction - but I think the audience really enjoyed the intimacy of a solo performance.''

The short Florida tour is coming at an interesting juncture, said Shocked, calling from Costa Mesa, Calif., where she was attending a retreat sponsored by the women's group at her church. She explained she has now completed a five-year project, a trilogy that began with her first studio album, 1988's Short Sharp Shocked, continued through 1989's Captain Swing and concluded with last year's Arkansas Traveler. She also is no longer working with most of those who had been involved in her career - a somewhat deliberate move to mark the end of the trilogy phase.

Stylistically, the three albums are as different from each other as they are from her debut, 1986's The Texas Campfire Tapes. That album was recorded on a fan's Walkman at a folk festival in Texas, her home state, and became a surprise hit when it was released in Britain and later the United States.

Shocked was frequently lumped with Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega and other neo-folkies following the release of Short Sharp Shocked, produced by Dwight Yoakam's partner, producer-guitarist Pete Anderson. She proved not so easily categorized, however, following the release of Captain Swing, on which Anderson helped her show more of her swing (both western and jazz) influences. She also displayed a strong sense of humor, particularly with the video for the single ''On the Greener Side,'' a sly parody of Robert Palmer's vixen-filled clips.

Then on Arkansas Traveler, Shocked opted for a more homespun, folkie sound. The album was recorded in Chicago; Dublin, Ireland; Memphis, Tenn.; Sydney, Australia; and Los Angeles. Mercury, her record label, was surprisingly supportive.

''I thought they were supportive,'' Shocked amended, with a laugh. ''In retrospect, I realized, basically, they just shrugged their shoulders and said, 'Well, we can't stop her. She's gotta do what she's gotta do.' ''

The album featured guest performances by some of her heroes and favorite contemporary musicians, including Doc Watson, Gatemouth Brown, Alison Krauss, Taj Mahal, Uncle Tupelo, Hothouse Flowers, Norman and Nancy Blake and The Band's Levon Helm and Garth Hudson.

''It was a lot of fun,'' Shocked said, ''and now Nanci Griffith has done something similar, but at the time, I really hadn't heard of any of that being done before. . . . It was exciting, quite honestly, and terrifying in the sense that in real life, I'm a very shy person, so each encounter with my heroes just caused sleepless nights, upset stomachs, butterflies and a lot of insecurity. But I got over it, and in many ways, I grew more self-confident having to face this kind of trial by fire.''

Shocked said that making a trilogy is her answer to Bob Dylan's line, ''How does it feel to be on your own/ with no direction home?''

''My response is, 'Well, dummy, make sure you leave home with a road map,' '' Shocked said. ''The trilogy is designed as a road map for me as much as for my audience. It very clearly outlines the sources of my music, which are the storytelling tradition of Texas songwriters; the blues tradition of Texas, which I refer to as swing; and the Texas kind of swing no matter what style - and then the fiddle tunes that were what I grew up playing with my father, what inspired me to begin playing my own music. Those are three pretty strong, distinctive sources of whatever I might end up doing in the future. Now I've kind of laid the foundation, and I'm ready to begin exploring what I can do.''

Shocked's next move is surprising - yet not an illogical progression given her blues and R&B influences.

''The next project will be very much funk, which is a lot more contemporary than anything I've done up till now,'' she said. ''Honestly, I don't come from the tradition of funk, but I do believe that the swing influences, the blues roots will be very much present in whatever my version of funk is. I'm probably going to tell some stories through funk music that I don't think are present in a lot of contemporary R&B, and that kind of goes back to an older tradition of soul music that told good stories.